President Jimmy Carter

Historical Perspective

Current Perspectives

Ralph Waldo Emerson - The great American Man of Letters, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote at age 41, “be an opener of doors for such as come after thee and do not try to make the universe a blind alley.”

I interpret this to mean, contribute to the overall wisdom of the world. Do not perpetuate superstition and dogma. Challenge the isms that limit our experience of the greater good. Share your ideas with the young. Teach them to think critically. Show the power of Love by your own actions.

Emerson also said “beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on the planet.” Yes thinkers are a threat to the status quo, and innovative thoughts are a threat to our personal habituated life as well. But that is exactly what is required of us if we want to keep the doors of perception open to the next generation and the next.

Yes, you and I are that great thinker. You and I are the ones we have been waiting for, you and I are the solution. It is in our nature to evolve, to contribute, to open the doors of our shared perception. We are beginning to awaken to the spiritual truth of our own being. As Rumi said so eloquently “don’t go back to sleep.”

Hordes of Argentines gathered in front of the National Congress building in Buenos Aires on Wednesday (3 June) to call for an end to gender-based violence, known as femicide. Similar protests also took place in cities across Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. Footballer Lionel Messi and Argentina's President Cristina Kirchner led the marchers in Buenos Aires where local media reported 200,000 joined the protest. Women's rights groups, political parties, unions and the Catholic Church have all backed the marches.

Protesters in the city carried banners and wore badges with the campaign slogan Ni Una Menos (Not One Less), and some wore t-shirts with pictures of victims of domestic violence, reports the BBC. Argentina is among 16 Latin American countries which have passed femicide legislation, introducing harsher legal penalties for those who murder women because of their gender. The participants at the rally demanded a strengthening of laws and official statistics on violence against women.

Femicide According to local women's rights group, Casa del Encuentro, Argentina reported 277 femicides – the killing of a woman by a man because of her gender – in 2014. Across Argentina, there have been 1,808 femicides since 2008. Back in 2012, the South American nation did pass a law punishing the crime with a life sentence, but the problem shows little sign of abating. Indeed, there have been more than 250 femicides every year since 2010, with a peak of 295 in 2013. A series of femicide cases have shocked the country. In April, the estranged husband of a kindergarten teacher stormed into a school where she worked and slit her throat in front of a class in the province of Cordoba. The boyfriend of a 14-year-old girl is accused of beating her to death when she became pregnant, and in another case a woman was stabbed to death in broad daylight in a café in the capital.

An Open Letter To Hillary Clintonby Marianne Williamson

Hi, Hillary. You know me. I mean, we're not friends, exactly, but we're acquaintances. You were wonderful to me back in 1994 when you invited me to the White House. It's a memory I will treasure always, and you gave it to me. I thank you.Now, about your presidential run -- if indeed you make it. I'm writing you this letter because I think the topic might figure into your decision-making, or maybe not.

I admit that in 2008 I went with Obama, feeling at the time that he was carrying the real spirit of things, yada, yada, yada. Yeah, well. Anyway.

That was then and this is now.

I want a woman president -- really, I do. A lot of us do. And yes, you're so qualified, and yes, we've known you forever, and yes, you'd know what to do from Day 1. We all get that.

But none of that is enough to get my vote, or the vote of a lot of people I know. We only want to vote for you if you run like hell away from that corporate box you've landed in. I'm telling you, Hillary. The American people have become hip to what's happening. We know now that Wall Street runs the country, and we don't like it. And for many of us, we don't want to vote for you if Wall Street runs you too.

There are the seeds of political revolution in the air -- a rebelliousness, a rambunctiousness -- that America has been sorely missing. It's faint, at least on the left, but it is there. As a matter of fact, as tragic as it is for a lifelong Democrat to have to admit this, the one place where we have been seeing it manifest recently is on the political right. The Tea Party, sans a codependent relationship with the Republican Party, is causing a real problem for establishment Republicans. And once progressives break free of their codependent relationship with the corporate Democrats, you're going to have a real problem on your hands too.

That's why I'm writing. I have a feeling you're getting most of your advice from people who think that everything I'm saying here is nonsense. So I'll say it as loudly as I can.

STOP NOW. Stop cozying up to the banks, to the chemical companies, to the military-industrial complex, to the party machine, and to all the various financiers who make up the plutocracy now ruining this country. Yeah, I know a lot of them are nice people and that's cool. But they should not be able to turn the elected representatives of the American people into mere inconveniences they can buy off election after election. And if we have a sense that you'd be just another puppet of the elite, then I don't believe that you will win. We were fooled once, but I don't think we're going to be fooled again.

In the final analysis, we really do love democracy -- and watching it dismantled as it's being dismantled, and corrupted like it's being corrupted, has taken a lot of us from denial to real depression to a collective "Hell, no!" that will have electoral consequences in 2016.

Years ago, George Lakoff compared Republicans to a critical father and Democrats to a nurturing mother. I pointed out a bit later that the critical father had become an abusive one -- but that as anyone with any psychotherapeutic understanding knows, the child will ultimately put a lot of his or her blame on the mother who stood by and allowed the abuse to happen! That's the Democratic Party machine today, Hillary. Please don't be one of them.

I know you know exactly what I'm saying, because I remember you -- a lot of us remember you -- when you were raging against the Establishment machine on top of which you're now so sweetly perched. That machine is not our salvation; it's our problem. Corporate Democrats might have gained some power for the party, but at the cost of its soul.

I'd love to clamor for you, to work for you, to cheer you on. I don't want to sit on the sidelines longing for Elizabeth or Bernie. I want to hear what's true from you. I want you to rail against the chemical companies and their GMO's -- not support them. I want you to decry the military industrial complex -- not assure them you're their girl. I want you to support reinstating Glass-Steagall -- not just wink at Wall Street while sipping its champagne. In short, I want you to name the real problems so we can trust you'd provide some real solutions.

But maybe that's just me wanting you to change, to be someone different than who you are. If that's true, please forgive my presumption and ignore this letter. But if anything I'm saying rings any kind of true at all, then I hope you'll start saying so.